Lindsey Graham Embodied the Republican Party’s Authoritarian Drift

Over more than 30 years in Congress, the South Carolina senator reflected the GOP’s cynicism, warmongering, and abandonment of democratic principles.

The best obituary of Lindsey Graham appeared not after his death on Saturday, but exactly a year before the event that would define the final stage of his career. On January 6, 2020, Rolling Stone published a profile of Graham by Mark Binelli that catalogued the South Carolina senator’s path from bipartisan dealmaker to MAGA disciple. It included this quote from Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign back when Graham was the maverick senator’s sidekick:

People try to analyze Lindsey through the prism of the manifest inconsistencies that exist between things that he used to believe and what he’s doing now. The way to understand him is to look at what’s consistent. And essentially what he is in American politics is what, in the aquatic world, would be a pilot fish: a smaller fish that hovers about a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its detritus. That’s Lindsey. And when he swam around the McCain shark, broadly viewed as a virtuous and good shark, Lindsey took on the patina of virtue. But wherever the apex shark is, you find the Lindsey fish hovering about, and Trump’s the newest shark in the sea. Lindsey has a real draw to power—but he’s found it unattainable on his own merits.

People try to analyze Lindsey through the prism of the manifest inconsistencies that exist between things that he used to believe and what he’s doing now. The way to understand him is to look at what’s consistent. And essentially what he is in American politics is what, in the........

© New Republic